New Drug Gives Hope to Pancreatic Cancer Patients

SadaNews - An American clinical study has achieved promising preliminary results for a new targeted therapy, which could represent an important step in the treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer.

Researchers from the "Dana-Farber Cancer Institute" in Boston explained that the drug achieved high rates of tumor shrinkage when combined with standard chemotherapy, without any unexpected side effects. The results were presented on Thursday at the "European Society for Medical Oncology for Gastrointestinal Cancers 2026" conference currently taking place in Munich, Germany.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer, often detected only after spreading to other organs due to the absence of clear symptoms in its early stages, reducing the chances for surgical treatment. Although chemotherapy remains the first option for advanced cases, its ability to control the disease remains limited, with a five-year survival rate for those affected by the disease at around 3 percent.

About 90 percent of pancreatic cancer patients carry mutations in a gene called "KRAS", with the "KRAS G12D" mutation alone accounting for approximately 40 percent of cases.

This mutation has been a difficult target for drug development for decades, before the emergence of a new generation of targeted therapies, including the drug "Zolbetuximab", which specifically targets the mutated protein responsible for tumor growth, rather than attacking all rapidly dividing cells as chemotherapy does.

The study involved 81 patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who had not received prior treatment, divided into two groups. The first group, consisting of 41 patients, received "Zolbetuximab" along with a modified chemotherapy protocol using "FOLFIRINOX", while the second group, consisting of 40 patients, received the drug with a chemotherapy combination of "Gemcitabin" and "Nab-Paclitaxel".

The results showed that 82 percent of the patients receiving "Zolbetuximab" with "FOLFIRINOX" experienced significant tumor shrinkage, compared to 61 percent in the second group. The treatment successfully controlled the disease in 96 percent of the patients in the first group, and 90 percent in the second group.

The impact of the treatment was not only limited to reducing tumor size; it also resulted in a significant drop in indicators of cancer presence in the blood, with all assessable patients recording a decrease of at least 50 percent in these indicators. Moreover, cancer markers completely disappeared from the blood in 47 percent of patients receiving "FOLFIRINOX", while the percentage rose to 71 percent among patients receiving "Gemcitabin" and "Nab-Paclitaxel", indicating a strong response to treatment.

Regarding safety, researchers confirmed that combining the targeted treatment with chemotherapy did not lead to new side effects, and the recorded symptoms were consistent with those known for chemotherapy, such as nausea, diarrhea, fatigue, and a decrease in white blood cell counts, with no treatment-related deaths reported.

Researchers stated that targeting the "KRAS G12D" mutation is one of the most promising areas of research in pancreatic cancer, emphasizing that the current results are encouraging as they indicate the potential for combining targeted therapy with chemotherapy without adding new safety risks.